13 Songs About Serial Killers

Some of history’s most notorious murderers have been immortalised in song by miscreants with guitars, and it’s a playlist of the best of those songs that we bring you today.

While heartbreak, longing and existential sadness have long been inspirations for most musicians, there’s always been a strain of morbid delinquents more inclined to write about the grimmer side of human existence.

Some of history’s most notorious murderers have been immortalised in song by miscreants with guitars, and it’s a playlist of the best of those songs that we bring you today.

Below are the stories behind 13 songs that have all been inspired by infamous serial killers, because…it’s Monday, and Mondays are awful.

(Follow the playlist at the bottom of the article too, gore fans!)

Let’s begin, shall we?

ALKALINETRIO - SADIE (Charles Manson)

Taken from the dark punks’ 2005 album Crimson, Sadie is about an accomplice of cult leader Charles Manson’s called Susan Atkins - also known as Sadie Glutz. She was one of a number of Manson’s followers who carried out nine murders in July and August 1969 at his urging, including Sharon Tate and her unborn baby. Glutz was found in possession of knives and a broken piece of Manson’s .22 caliber revolver. The song, which is actually sympathetic towards Glutz,includes a fragment of her testimony read by Heather Hannoura (later Gabel), who designed Alkaline Trio’s iconic heart and skull logo.

SLAYER - DEADSKINMASK (Ed Gein)

If the title of this brutal Slayer song - from 1990’s fifth album, Seasons In The Abyss - doesn’t tell you what kind of killer Ed Gein was, then the lyrics certainly do. Gein would make ornaments from his victims’ bodies - including, yes, their skin - and the song offers a gruesome portrayal of Gein’s twisted psyche: “Dance with the dead in my dreams / Listen to their hallowed screams.” The track ends with a woman’s voice, presumably one of his victims, pleading to be let go. “I don’t wanna play anymore, Mr. Gein. Mr. Gein this isn’t fun anymore.” An incredibly disturbing song about an incredibly disturber killer.

MOTÖRHEAD - JACKTHERIPPER (Jack The Ripper)

There are plenty of songs about Britain’s most famous serial killer, including tunes by Rancid, Judas Priest and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - but few bring him and his late 19th century crimes to life as vividly as Motörhead. Taken from the band’s tenth album, March Ör Die, Lemmy’s guttural growl is both sinister and creepy. “Tall dark stranger, knocking your door/Looking through the window/It’s you he’s looking for” he sings menacingly and it really feels like something out of horror movie. Of course, Jack The Ripper was as real as real could be, murdering at least five women and disembowling them to varying degrees.

JANE’S ADDICTION - TED, JUSTADMITIT (Ted Bundy)

This groove-laden song from Jane’s Addiction’s debut album feels almost too gentle given that it’s about Ted Bundy. One of America’s most notorious serial killers, Bundy admitted to killing 30 women between 1974 and 1978. Murder was just the beginning, however - he would return to the scene of his crimes and engage in necrophilia with the corpses until putrefaction. He also fully decapitated at least 12 of his victims. Yet while the music might not be that brutal, the band used a sample of a Ted Bundy interview from just before his execution, making it incredibly real and disturbing.

ATTHEDRIVE-IN - ARCARSENAL (Jeffrey Dahmer)

One of the most notorious serial killers in the history of serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer became known as the Milwaukee Cannibal after killing 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He didn’t just kill them, though - his crimes involved rape and dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. Which really puts the line “Have you ever tasted skin?” from this frenzied, frantic and ferocious opener of 2000’s Relationship Of Command in a whole new light, doesn’t it? It’s made all the more intense because it’s in the first person, putting you right inside Dahmer’s incredibly twisted and tortured head.

RAMMSTEIN - MEINTEIL (Armin Meiwes)

Technically, Armin Meiwes - also known as The Butcher Master and the Rotenburg Cannibal - isn’t a serial killer because he only murdered one person. But the way in which he did so is so screwed up and disgusting that it inspired Rammstein to write this song. Mein Teil, which translates as My Part tells the story of how Meiwes, thanks to a site for people with cannibal fetishes, found a victim, Bernd Brandes, who was willing to be killed and eaten. The pair lopped off Brandes’ penis and tried to cook it and eat it. Brandes suffered massive blood loss and was drifting in and out of consciousness before Meiwes stabbed him in the throat and hung his body on a meat hook. Which is perfect fodder for a Rammstein song, isn’t it?

MARILYNMANSON - MISTERSUPERSTAR (Mark David Chapman)

Given that the second part of Brian Warner’s stage name is a reference to Charles Manson - and that the rest of the band’s monikers were used of serial killer surnames - it’s little surprise that he would write about the macabre. While this song - taken from 1996’s seminal Antichrist Superstar - doesn’t mention him by name, it’s generally thought to be about John Lennon’s obsessed superfan Mark David Chapman, who gunned Lennon down in New York on December 8 1980. Again, while Chapman’s technically not a serial killer, the huge cultural impact of the murder - not to mention the song’s gritty and raucous energy and the origins of Manson’s name - more than warrant its inclusion on this list.

SEXPISTOLS - NOONEISINNOCENT (Myra Hindley and Ian Brady)

While this song only mentions Moors murderers in passing - “God save Myra Hindley, God save Ian Brady / Even though he’s horrible and she ain’t what you call a lady” - it’s obviously an incredibly provocative line that dominates this brash track from the UK punks’ 1979 soundtrack album. Full of off-kilter, sardonic humour, the song was actually sung by Ronnie Biggs, the criminal behind the Great Train Robbery. Hindley and Brady killed five children aged 10 to 17 between July 1963 and October 1965 in the Manchester area, leading Hindley to be called “the most evil woman in Britain” by the British press.

SIOUXSIEANDTHEBANSHEES - NIGHTSHIFT (Peter Sutcliffe)

“Fuck the mothers kill the others/Fuck the others kill the mothers.” So begins the gloomy, noirish song by the gothy post-punks Siouxsie And The Banshees about Peter Sutcliffe. Better known as the Yorkshire Ripper, Sutcliffe claimed that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. In 1981, he was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others. He was only captured after being arrested for driving with false licence plates, after which police started questioning him about the spate of killings and he confessed.

FEARFACTORY - SUFFERAGE (John Wayne Gacy)

Between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne Gacy Jr. raped, tortured and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men inside his ranch house Cook County, Illinois. He became known as the “Killer Clown” because he would dress up as Pogo the Clown, a (totally terrifying) character he had created, for charitable services, fundraising events and children’s parties. 26 of his victims were hidden in the crawl space of his home, something referenced in this brutal, punishing song from Fear Factory’s 1992 debut album Soul Of A New Machine.

EXODUS - GOING, GOINGGONE (Richard Ramirez)

On 2005’s seventh album, Shovel Headed Kill Machine veteran thrash metal lets Exodus told the story of Richard Ramirez. Also known as the Night Stalker, Ramirez - who was also a Satanist - terrorized residents of the greater Los Angeles area between June 1984 and August 1985 in a series spot home invasions. Using handguns, machetes, knives and a hammer, among other instruments, Ramirez tortured and murdered 13 people until he was finally caught. An overpowering explosion of vicious thrash riffs, this song is almost as brutal as the murders that inspired it.

MELVINS - ZODIAC (The Zodiac Killer)

Electric Wizard and Slayer have also written songs about The Zodiac Killer, but this Melvins tune - from 1991’s third album Bullhead - is a belligerent blast of sludgy, sinister noise. The identity of the Zodiac Killer has never been identified, and only one of the cryptograms the Californian killer sent to the local Bay Area press has ever been solved. Operating between the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Zodiac Killer claimed to be responsible for 37 murders, there are only seven confirmed victims, two of whom survived. The case remains open and unsolved today.

CANNIBALCORPSE - EATENBACKTOLIFE (Alferd Packer)

While its 11 songs aren’t exclusively about him, American death metallers Cannibal Corpse dedicated the whole of their 1990 debut album to the “memory of Alferd Packer, the first American cannibal (R.I.P.)”. Full of gruesome lyrics - “Hack, slice, chop, carve, rip and tear/

Carving up your eyeballs, watch them sit and stare” from Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains, for example - that are matched only by the intense sonic assault of the music, this album is full of lines inspired by, but not limited to, Packer, a gold prospector in the 19th century who allegedly killed and ate the rest of his mining party.